My name is Rebecca Sager. After nearly 30 years as a career paralegal, I made a decision to make a career change and enter the world of teaching. I did not choose to be a paralegal. That career path opened up to me completely by accident. I began working for a law firm as a secretary in my senior year of high school. Several years later, I obtained my paralegal certification and began working as a paralegal. A few more years passed, and I returned to school to complete my undergraduate education. I earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the College of Charleston. I explored various career options, but returned to being a paralegal where I remain to this day.
In the summer of 2014, I began to examine my life’s contribution to society as a whole. While I had affected change in the lives of a few individuals, I realized that working within the confines of a law office with little contact with the outside world left few opportunities to truly contribute. After much reflection, I decided to pursue teaching. I chose high school English Language Arts both because of my love of the written word and because I realized that reading and writing are fundamental to the life-long pursuit of knowledge. If I can pass along only a little bit of my own experience and love of learning to others, this career change will be worth all of the hard work and sacrifice that it is requiring of me.
My Goals
üTo become more familiar with the technologies available to engage today's students. üTo learn to use technology to enhance learning. üTo better prepare myself to help my students prepare themselves for their future -- a future that includes the use of ever-demanding technological awareness and know-how.
My Prezi is an adaptation of a short genre lesson I taught to a ninth grade remedial reading/writing class during my Fall 2016 Practicum at R.B. Stall High School. I enjoyed teaching this particular lesson and had some good feedback from both the students and my cooperating teacher. After completing the Prezi presentation of this information, I wish I had known about Prezi last fall. I envision using this lesson and the related Prezi as a refresher on genre. The lesson is also a very useful tool for ESL students who may be experiencing the academic terminology surrounding literary genre for the first time. I found the Prezi platform provided an excellent format to present simple information in a fun and engaging manner.
I hope you enjoy and I look forward to reading your comments.
Digital Storytelling
Continuing with the theme of studying Genre, the digital storytelling assignment asks students to select a text from one of the five major genres and, after reading the text, to prepare a "book trailer" that, in addition to advertising the text, incorporates the elements of the work's genre.
Examining Text Through the Lens of Genre
Learning Objectives:
Students will select a text from within a particular genre for the purpose of reading for enjoyment, acquiring new learning, and building stamina.
Students will prepare a visual and linguistic presentation using available technology to inform others about the genre and elements of the selected text.
Assignment:
In previous lessons, students have reviewed the major literary genres and sub-genres. To solidify understanding of genre, students will select a book from one of the five major genres (between 100 and 250 pages). Upon completion of reading the selected book (students will be given one week to finish reading their selected text).
Students will use movie maker programs such as iVideo, MovieMaker, Animoto, Kizoa, wemovie, etc., to generate a 30- to 90-second book trailer. The book trailer is to incorporate both elements of the book’s genre (or genres) and a short story that entices other students to want to read the book. Book trailer videos will be uploaded to the class wiki for presentation to the class.
To assist students in preparing the book trailer, a schedule of related events includes:
Week One:
1) Day 1 - Select book and have approved by teacher;
2) Days 2-5 - Read selected book – deadline 1 week;
Week Two
3) Day 1 - Prepare and review with teacher a rough outline or storyboard of the story student wishes to tell;
4) Days 2 & 3 – using the rough outline or storyboard created yesterday, create book trailer using movie making software (this will be done in class or in computer lab to allow all students access to appropriate computer software)
5) Days 4 & 5 – students will present book trailers in class
The following is a sample book trailer that I created for a Young Adult Literature class. More more may be found online by googling “book trailers.”
Differentiation and Accommodation for Students with Special Needs: For LD students and students with specialized IEPs, articles or shorter readings can be substituted for books. The intent is to get students reading longer, more complex texts, but accommodations may be needed so that all students can participate in the assignment.
Reflection: I believe student created book trailers will help to not only solidify understanding of genre, but also create an interest in reading and sharing what they have read with others. Further, by accommodating students with special needs, everyone can participate equally in the assignment.
Image result for images for editing revising
Editing Project
How does one get better at writing? By writing – a lot! That seems obvious, of course, but the truth is that just because one writes a lot does not mean that individual is a writer or more specifically a good writer. Revising and editing help make writers better. Students need to be taught why revising and editing are important and how to revise and edit.
I have found that not having someone to read over my papers before submitting them has caused a great deal of heartache this semester. Writers need someone they can trust to review their work for multiple reasons. Is the writing clear and succinct? Are topics clearly delineated and proven with sufficient facts? If the piece is a narrative, does it include words that paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind? Finally, is the paper grammatically and stylistically correct? And, finally, is the spelling correct? Once the initial draft is completed, students should ask themselves and others these questions about the text they have just written. The difficulty of being one’s own “worst critic” is the reason why editors are in such high demand. Read the acknowledgements pages of many books and you will see just how important “others” are to the writing process.
There are so many ways to teach students to help each other in the revision process. I have designed two activities through which students could help each other write better.
In pairs, have each student read his partner’s paper aloud. By reading aloud, students should be able to hear any awkward sentence or phrase constructions, and hear when an incorrect word form is used. The students can then work together to improve the sentences in which they have identified problems. Improving individual sentences will help to improve the paper as a whole.
In small groups of 3-4 students, select one student's paper at random. Use a cut-and-paste method (literally cutting the paper into strips containing sentences or paragraphs) to rearrange the text to help students see how moving sentences and paragraphs around can improve the flow of ideas through the paper. Students can help the writer see where he/she may need a stronger topic sentence or where the paper is lacking sufficient support.
Once students have published their papers (e.g., turned them in) and received feedback from the teacher, the whole class can participate in an exercise using sample sentences from multiple papers. Using an overhead projector or SmartBoard, the teacher will project sample sentences on the board and ask students to come to the board and re-write the sentence in a way they believe will make the sentence better. SmartBoard technology can help students actually rearrange the words in the sentence on the board without re-writing, and use the SmartBoard’s stylus to insert words manually.
Oral History Project
During genre studies, students will have identified the elements of the genre folklore and one of its sub-genres: legend. To create additional interest in the source of myth, fairy tale, and legend that students learned about during genre studies, student will engage in an oral history unit to focus on the act and the art of storytelling.
Almost everyone knows someone in her or her family who is a storyteller, or knows someone in the neighborhood or community who is well known as a storyteller.
The unit will consist of lessons that cover:
1) An introduction to oral histories, oral history projects, the purpose of oral histories, and how to conduct an oral history interview.
2) The project:
Each student will identify a person whom he/she believes is the ultimate storyteller: that person "who always tells the best stories."
Students will research the elements of storytelling and create an interview questionnaire for use in interviewing his or her selected interviewee.
In order to ensure student safety, all interview schedules and arrangements must be set forth in writing on a form to be provided to the students and approved by the teacher and the student’s parents/guardians.
Students will conduct the interview. The interview should be at least 15 minutes long, but preferably no more than 30 minutes. The interviewee should tell at least one “story” for which he or she is well known. Interviewers must ensure that the “story” will not cause embarrassment to any other individual.
Following the interview, each student will write a 700- to 1200-word essay in which he/she will summarize the interview, identify and discuss the elements of good storytelling and identify those elements in the interviewee’s story, and finally, explain how good storytelling may lead to the development of legends.
I was somewhat stumped when I started the wiki project. I really did not know how I could or wanted to use a wiki in my classroom. Since the recurring theme in my recent course work has been connected to genre studies, I decided to see if I could use a wiki to extend the genre studies from a single lesson into a whole unit or even a full semester project. I wanted to provide students a way to apply the information they learned about genre in a practical, real-world environment. Much like the online "Good Reads" website, this classroom wiki affords students an opportunity to practice preparing book reviews, rating books, and appropriately categorizing books according to their genre. The wiki is divided into three main sections:
1) course pages holding the home page, introductions page, and course materials page;
2) student pages on which I have embedded a table that holds the student's reading log and on which the students will post their genre-related project; and
3) genre pages on which students will upload individual Book Recommendation Forms.
Developing the wiki afforded me the opportunity to see how to put one together from the start. I was also able to see the potential for growth in using wikis in the classroom. Overall, I am pleased with how this project turned out given my initial misgivings about the project.
Blog Project
Using Blogs to Encourage Writing to Learn In Connection with Self-Selected Reading
Using student-created blogs provides students with a forum in which to write to learn and create multimodal compositions and affords teachers the ability to provide non-judgmental and objective feedback and encouragement.
Self-selected reading: Over the course of the semester, students will be required to read a minimum number of books (equal to 150 pages or more) the entire genre spectrum. For example, during an 18 week term, student would be required to read at least 12 books. They should read at least one book in each of the major genre categories (5 total) with the remaining books coming from any of the sub-genres.
In addition to using the Wiki page to maintain reading logs and uploading reading recommendation forms, the students will use a self-created blog as a reading-writing-response journal to record their interactions with their self-selected texts. Thus, there should be a minimum of 12 blog entries. Some questions the students can consider in writing about their books include:
Why did you select this particular book?
What about the book interested you?
How did you relate to the characters in the book
Talk about your favorite character? How did the character develop over the course of the story?
What did you learn from reading this book?
What additional research would you like to do as a result of reading this book? (on the topic, the author, the theme or setting)
Explain how this book changed your view of a particular topic or situation.
The blog is also a place where the students can do more than write about their experiences with their self-selected texts; they can engage in the act of creating a journal that is personal to them and their experience. They can add images, videos, music, etc., to their journal entries.
Teacher-provided feedback will be in the form of suggestions for improvement in writing conventions or clarification of ideas and praise for creativity in the realm of the multi-modal composition. This will be a participatory project and graded accordingly.
Because I wanted something that was both scholarly and current, locating an appropriate publication or journal dealing with educational technology, technology in the classroom, emergency technology in the classroom, etc., proved an overwhelming exercise. I managed, however, to stumble across Cite Journal (//http://www.citejournal.org/about///), a publication of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. After reviewing both AACE’s site and the Cite website, the online journal seemed to fulfill all the requirements I could possibly have for a journal related to using technology in the classroom. The publisher’s home page states:
"The //CITE Journal// is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, established and jointly sponsored by five professional associations (AMTE, ASTE, NCSS-CUFA, CEE, and SITE). This is the only joint venture of this kind in the field of teacher education.
The journal’s online medium also allows authors to demonstrate the technologies about which they are writing, including video and audio segments, animation, virtual reality, Web links, and simulations. TheCITE Journal was established with support from a U.S. Department of Education Catalyst grant."
An exciting element about this online Journal – besides the fact that it is free – is that articles are categorized by subject matter: Mathematics, English Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, General, and Current Practice. The focus of the journal and its articles is on teacher education, pre-service teacher education, in-service teacher education, including continuing education and professional development.
This journal brings together the best in scholarly discourse regarding emerging technology and its use in classrooms across the curriculum. Before implementing a particular technological strategy in my own classroom, I can quickly search the journal’s database for articles concerning the particular technology, or the particular strategy, to determine where, when, and how successfully the strategy has been used before. Knowing that teachers write the articles for teachers and that they are peer-reviewed, I feel I can trust the information. Further, the journal invites submissions setting forth contradictory positions on articles published in the journal, so long as the opposing position adds to the scholarly discourse.
I reviewed some other online “publications” regarding emerging technology in the classroom, but was suspicious of the publishers, authors, intent, etc. One such site was the online publication of a “multi-brand technology solutions provider.” Thank you, but no thank you. It reminded me to always review the “about” page when looking into online publications.
For the Revision Project, I chose to revise the Educational Technology Publication assignment. I chose this assignment because my original project was incorrect. I misunderstood the term "publication," and the project was upon me before I remembered to ask for clarification. I completed the original project utilizing an online journal, rather than a single article. The following article is from the online Journal discussed above and I feel it is relevant both to this class and to our future, whether it is as teachers, students, or consumers.
Related image
=Rethinking Computer Literacy =
and the
English Language Arts Classroom
Carl Young of Virginia Tech looks at technology, the use of technology in the English Language Arts class, and the critical literacies related to each in hopes of providing a bridge for the effective use of technology in the English Language Arts class. Young addresses the “disconnect between the idealism of those advocating for use of technology in schools and the reality of integrating technology effectively into today’s classrooms” and looks at the issues of equity in access for all students. He states that lots of money has been invested in technology itself, but that there is no commensurate investment in preparing teachers to effectively implement technology in the classroom. Young asks all educators, but specifically English Language Arts teachers, to revisit the idea of incorporating technology to re-read and thus re-write the world around us and to involve students in collaborative, inter-disciplinary activities to solve contemporary problems. In reviewing the pros and cons, Young synthesizes the issues into a simple framework for incorporating technology into the ELA class:
Develop a pedagogical framework.
Ask the important questions.
Establish working guidelines.
The article discusses each element in detail, provides detailed dos and don’ts, and, finally, gives case studies for consideration. The article provides an important foundation for teachers seeking to effectively incorporate technology that will enhance learning and prepare students for the real world they are getting ready to enter. Teachers cannot look at computer literacy as “simply possessing specific computer skills as much as developing a confident and flexible attitude about technology” in themselves and their students. We must develop that flexible attitude in our students not just about technology but about every aspect of their lives. Our world is changing daily and the student who can change with it will be successful. To help our students be flexible, we must be flexible as well. http://www.citejournal.org/volume-4/issue-1-04/english-language-arts/teaching-the-english-language-arts-with-technology-a-critical-approach-and-pedagogical-framework/
Reflection
Our first assignment in Teaching with Technology asked us to identify our goals for the course. My goals were modest:
To become more familiar with the technologies available to engage today's students.
To learn to use technology to enhance learning.
To better prepare myself to help my students prepare themselves for their future – a future that includes the use of ever-demanding technological awareness and know-how.
In the final analysis, this class allowed me to meet all three goals. Since that first assignment, I have worked with software and available online tools that I did not even know existed or with which I was only vaguely familiar, thus becoming more familiar with the technologies available to engage today’s students. I created my very first Prezi. Not only did I work within a wiki, something I had done before, but I got to create my own wiki page that was designed to meet a specific instructional goal. Thus, I learned how to use some available technological tools to enhance learning. I thought about how to use blogs to enhance student interaction with reading. I discovered ways to engage students in self-directed learning projects using technologies with which they are already familiar. And, finally, I read about and researched the topic of incorporating technology in a sound pedagogical manner that will help prepare my students for a future that includes the use of ever-demanding technological awareness and know-how. Check, check and check.
My favorite part of this course was being able to take a very simple mini-lesson on genre and expand it into a complete project by incorporating online tools that engage students in the project. Overall, I was pleased with everything I created for this class. I was also inspired by the many wonderful projects of my classmates and peers.
This class has provided me with a broader view of not only educational technology, but also of technologies available to students outside of the classroom and to the ever-expanding field of technological innovation. I thought I was technologically flexible before taking this class. Just like my genre lesson, my idea of “technologically flexible” has also expanded.
My Life to Date
My name is Rebecca Sager. After nearly 30 years as a career paralegal, I made a decision to make a career change and enter the world of teaching. I did not choose to be a paralegal. That career path opened up to me completely by accident. I began working for a law firm as a secretary in my senior year of high school. Several years later, I obtained my paralegal certification and began working as a paralegal. A few more years passed, and I returned to school to complete my undergraduate education. I earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the College of Charleston. I explored various career options, but returned to being a paralegal where I remain to this day.
In the summer of 2014, I began to examine my life’s contribution to society as a whole. While I had affected change in the lives of a few individuals, I realized that working within the confines of a law office with little contact with the outside world left few opportunities to truly contribute. After much reflection, I decided to pursue teaching. I chose high school English Language Arts both because of my love of the written word and because I realized that reading and writing are fundamental to the life-long pursuit of knowledge. If I can pass along only a little bit of my own experience and love of learning to others, this career change will be worth all of the hard work and sacrifice that it is requiring of me.
My Goals
üTo become more familiar with the technologies available to engage today's students.
üTo learn to use technology to enhance learning.
üTo better prepare myself to help my students prepare themselves for their future -- a future that includes the use of ever-demanding technological awareness and know-how.
Prezi Project
http://prezi.com/uxzgulil2mem/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0shareMy Prezi is an adaptation of a short genre lesson I taught to a ninth grade remedial reading/writing class during my Fall 2016 Practicum at R.B. Stall High School. I enjoyed teaching this particular lesson and had some good feedback from both the students and my cooperating teacher. After completing the Prezi presentation of this information, I wish I had known about Prezi last fall. I envision using this lesson and the related Prezi as a refresher on genre. The lesson is also a very useful tool for ESL students who may be experiencing the academic terminology surrounding literary genre for the first time. I found the Prezi platform provided an excellent format to present simple information in a fun and engaging manner.
I hope you enjoy and I look forward to reading your comments.
Digital Storytelling
Continuing with the theme of studying Genre, the digital storytelling assignment asks students to select a text from one of the five major genres and, after reading the text, to prepare a "book trailer" that, in addition to advertising the text, incorporates the elements of the work's genre.
Examining Text Through the Lens of Genre
Learning Objectives:
Students will select a text from within a particular genre for the purpose of reading for enjoyment, acquiring new learning, and building stamina.
Students will prepare a visual and linguistic presentation using available technology to inform others about the genre and elements of the selected text.
Assignment:
In previous lessons, students have reviewed the major literary genres and sub-genres. To solidify understanding of genre, students will select a book from one of the five major genres (between 100 and 250 pages). Upon completion of reading the selected book (students will be given one week to finish reading their selected text).
Students will use movie maker programs such as iVideo, MovieMaker, Animoto, Kizoa, wemovie, etc., to generate a 30- to 90-second book trailer. The book trailer is to incorporate both elements of the book’s genre (or genres) and a short story that entices other students to want to read the book. Book trailer videos will be uploaded to the class wiki for presentation to the class.
To assist students in preparing the book trailer, a schedule of related events includes:
Week One:
1) Day 1 - Select book and have approved by teacher;
2) Days 2-5 - Read selected book – deadline 1 week;
Week Two
3) Day 1 - Prepare and review with teacher a rough outline or storyboard of the story student wishes to tell;
4) Days 2 & 3 – using the rough outline or storyboard created yesterday, create book trailer using movie making software (this will be done in class or in computer lab to allow all students access to appropriate computer software)
5) Days 4 & 5 – students will present book trailers in class
The following is a sample book trailer that I created for a Young Adult Literature class. More more may be found online by googling “book trailers.”
https://youtu.be/uRnmyP0StKg
Standards:
Reading: RC13
Communicating: C2, C3, C4
Differentiation and Accommodation for Students with Special Needs: For LD students and students with specialized IEPs, articles or shorter readings can be substituted for books. The intent is to get students reading longer, more complex texts, but accommodations may be needed so that all students can participate in the assignment.
Reflection: I believe student created book trailers will help to not only solidify understanding of genre, but also create an interest in reading and sharing what they have read with others. Further, by accommodating students with special needs, everyone can participate equally in the assignment.
Editing Project
I have found that not having someone to read over my papers before submitting them has caused a great deal of heartache this semester. Writers need someone they can trust to review their work for multiple reasons. Is the writing clear and succinct? Are topics clearly delineated and proven with sufficient facts? If the piece is a narrative, does it include words that paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind? Finally, is the paper grammatically and stylistically correct? And, finally, is the spelling correct? Once the initial draft is completed, students should ask themselves and others these questions about the text they have just written. The difficulty of being one’s own “worst critic” is the reason why editors are in such high demand. Read the acknowledgements pages of many books and you will see just how important “others” are to the writing process.
There are so many ways to teach students to help each other in the revision process. I have designed two activities through which students could help each other write better.
Once students have published their papers (e.g., turned them in) and received feedback from the teacher, the whole class can participate in an exercise using sample sentences from multiple papers. Using an overhead projector or SmartBoard, the teacher will project sample sentences on the board and ask students to come to the board and re-write the sentence in a way they believe will make the sentence better. SmartBoard technology can help students actually rearrange the words in the sentence on the board without re-writing, and use the SmartBoard’s stylus to insert words manually.
Oral History Project
Almost everyone knows someone in her or her family who is a storyteller, or knows someone in the neighborhood or community who is well known as a storyteller.
1) An introduction to oral histories, oral history projects, the purpose of oral histories, and how to conduct an oral history interview.
2) The project:
Each student will identify a person whom he/she believes is the ultimate storyteller: that person "who always tells the best stories."
Students will research the elements of storytelling and create an interview questionnaire for use in interviewing his or her selected interviewee.
In order to ensure student safety, all interview schedules and arrangements must be set forth in writing on a form to be provided to the students and approved by the teacher and the student’s parents/guardians.
Students will conduct the interview. The interview should be at least 15 minutes long, but preferably no more than 30 minutes. The interviewee should tell at least one “story” for which he or she is well known. Interviewers must ensure that the “story” will not cause embarrassment to any other individual.
Following the interview, each student will write a 700- to 1200-word essay in which he/she will summarize the interview, identify and discuss the elements of good storytelling and identify those elements in the interviewee’s story, and finally, explain how good storytelling may lead to the development of legends.
Wiki Project
1) course pages holding the home page, introductions page, and course materials page;
2) student pages on which I have embedded a table that holds the student's reading log and on which the students will post their genre-related project; and
3) genre pages on which students will upload individual Book Recommendation Forms.
Developing the wiki afforded me the opportunity to see how to put one together from the start. I was also able to see the potential for growth in using wikis in the classroom. Overall, I am pleased with how this project turned out given my initial misgivings about the project.
Blog Project
Using student-created blogs provides students with a forum in which to write to learn and create multimodal compositions and affords teachers the ability to provide non-judgmental and objective feedback and encouragement.
Self-selected reading: Over the course of the semester, students will be required to read a minimum number of books (equal to 150 pages or more) the entire genre spectrum. For example, during an 18 week term, student would be required to read at least 12 books. They should read at least one book in each of the major genre categories (5 total) with the remaining books coming from any of the sub-genres.
In addition to using the Wiki page to maintain reading logs and uploading reading recommendation forms, the students will use a self-created blog as a reading-writing-response journal to record their interactions with their self-selected texts. Thus, there should be a minimum of 12 blog entries. Some questions the students can consider in writing about their books include:
The blog is also a place where the students can do more than write about their experiences with their self-selected texts; they can engage in the act of creating a journal that is personal to them and their experience. They can add images, videos, music, etc., to their journal entries.
Teacher-provided feedback will be in the form of suggestions for improvement in writing conventions or clarification of ideas and praise for creativity in the realm of the multi-modal composition. This will be a participatory project and graded accordingly.
An excellent article on using blogs in a flipped ELA class can be found at http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flip-ela-class-with-blogs-brian-sztabnik
Educational Technology Publication
Because I wanted something that was both scholarly and current, locating an appropriate publication or journal dealing with educational technology, technology in the classroom, emergency technology in the classroom, etc., proved an overwhelming exercise. I managed, however, to stumble across Cite Journal (//http://www.citejournal.org/about///), a publication of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. After reviewing both AACE’s site and the Cite website, the online journal seemed to fulfill all the requirements I could possibly have for a journal related to using technology in the classroom. The publisher’s home page states:
The journal’s online medium also allows authors to demonstrate the technologies about which they are writing, including video and audio segments, animation, virtual reality, Web links, and simulations. TheCITE Journal was established with support from a U.S. Department of Education Catalyst grant."
https://www.aace.org/pubs/cite/
An exciting element about this online Journal – besides the fact that it is free – is that articles are categorized by subject matter: Mathematics, English Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, General, and Current Practice. The focus of the journal and its articles is on teacher education, pre-service teacher education, in-service teacher education, including continuing education and professional development.
This journal brings together the best in scholarly discourse regarding emerging technology and its use in classrooms across the curriculum. Before implementing a particular technological strategy in my own classroom, I can quickly search the journal’s database for articles concerning the particular technology, or the particular strategy, to determine where, when, and how successfully the strategy has been used before. Knowing that teachers write the articles for teachers and that they are peer-reviewed, I feel I can trust the information. Further, the journal invites submissions setting forth contradictory positions on articles published in the journal, so long as the opposing position adds to the scholarly discourse.
I reviewed some other online “publications” regarding emerging technology in the classroom, but was suspicious of the publishers, authors, intent, etc. One such site was the online publication of a “multi-brand technology solutions provider.” Thank you, but no thank you. It reminded me to always review the “about” page when looking into online publications.
Just because I thought this was awesome!
Working With Emerging Technology
DIRECT LINK FOR VIDEO REFERENCED ABOVE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLVn2p8T4WI
Revision Project - Educational Technology Publication
For the Revision Project, I chose to revise the Educational Technology Publication assignment. I chose this assignment because my original project was incorrect. I misunderstood the term "publication," and the project was upon me before I remembered to ask for clarification. I completed the original project utilizing an online journal, rather than a single article. The following article is from the online Journal discussed above and I feel it is relevant both to this class and to our future, whether it is as teachers, students, or consumers.
=Rethinking Computer Literacy =
and the
English Language Arts Classroom
Young addresses the “disconnect between the idealism of those advocating for use of technology in schools and the reality of integrating technology effectively into today’s classrooms” and looks at the issues of equity in access for all students. He states that lots of money has been invested in technology itself, but that there is no commensurate investment in preparing teachers to effectively implement technology in the classroom. Young asks all educators, but specifically English Language Arts teachers, to revisit the idea of incorporating technology to re-read and thus re-write the world around us and to involve students in collaborative, inter-disciplinary activities to solve contemporary problems. In reviewing the pros and cons, Young synthesizes the issues into a simple framework for incorporating technology into the ELA class:
The article discusses each element in detail, provides detailed dos and don’ts, and, finally, gives case studies for consideration. The article provides an important foundation for teachers seeking to effectively incorporate technology that will enhance learning and prepare students for the real world they are getting ready to enter. Teachers cannot look at computer literacy as “simply possessing specific computer skills as much as developing a confident and flexible attitude about technology” in themselves and their students. We must develop that flexible attitude in our students not just about technology but about every aspect of their lives. Our world is changing daily and the student who can change with it will be successful. To help our students be flexible, we must be flexible as well.
http://www.citejournal.org/volume-4/issue-1-04/english-language-arts/teaching-the-english-language-arts-with-technology-a-critical-approach-and-pedagogical-framework/
Reflection
Our first assignment in Teaching with Technology asked us to identify our goals for the course. My goals were modest:
In the final analysis, this class allowed me to meet all three goals. Since that first assignment, I have worked with software and available online tools that I did not even know existed or with which I was only vaguely familiar, thus becoming more familiar with the technologies available to engage today’s students. I created my very first Prezi. Not only did I work within a wiki, something I had done before, but I got to create my own wiki page that was designed to meet a specific instructional goal. Thus, I learned how to use some available technological tools to enhance learning. I thought about how to use blogs to enhance student interaction with reading. I discovered ways to engage students in self-directed learning projects using technologies with which they are already familiar. And, finally, I read about and researched the topic of incorporating technology in a sound pedagogical manner that will help prepare my students for a future that includes the use of ever-demanding technological awareness and know-how. Check, check and check.
My favorite part of this course was being able to take a very simple mini-lesson on genre and expand it into a complete project by incorporating online tools that engage students in the project. Overall, I was pleased with everything I created for this class. I was also inspired by the many wonderful projects of my classmates and peers.
This class has provided me with a broader view of not only educational technology, but also of technologies available to students outside of the classroom and to the ever-expanding field of technological innovation. I thought I was technologically flexible before taking this class. Just like my genre lesson, my idea of “technologically flexible” has also expanded.
. . . the end.